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Original Title:	The Secret of Santa Vittoria
ISBN:	0881842672 (ISBN13: 9780881842678)
Edition Language:	English

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Robert Crichton

Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 416 pages

Rating: 4.15 | 804 Users | 84 Reviews

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After visiting some of the hilltowns in Tuscany, I wondered what it would have been like to live through WWII there. Based on a true story and the author 's personal experience, the book clearly told the story of one small village and their ordeal. It was light and humorous, insightful and introspective, and the narrator was excellent! In my mind I placed the book in Montepulciano, the heart of wine making country and a town with many of the same characteristics as the one in the book. The characterization of the townspeople was spot on; they came alive, as did their German occupiers.

Quite a gem!

From The Independent: They thus missed the book's remarkable strengths: its versatile depiction of characters, its unpretentious but subtle prose. Based on the true story of an Italian village that hid its wine from occupying German forces, and probably derived from Crichton's own experiences as an American infantryman fighting his way up Italy, The Secret of Santa Vittoria painted a rich tableau of foreign life for notoriously parochial American readers. Comic, occasionally mawkish, the novel can still veer sharply away from excessive sentimentality. Having bamboozled the dozy occupying Germans, for example, the village's inhabitants find a different treatment in store when a crack Wehrmacht unit retreats through their town:

They never looked at us. They moved through us with the assurance of men who know that if so much as one shot was fired at them by some Renaissance fighter, they would burn the town to the ground.

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Title	:	The Secret of Santa Vittoria
Author	:	Robert Crichton
Book Format	:	Mass Market Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 416 pages
Published	:	by Carroll & Graf Publishers (first published 1966)
Categories	:	Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Cultural. Italy. War. World War II

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Ratings: 4.15 From 804 Users | 84 Reviews

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I just loved reading this book, and do so from time to time again when the need arises. It's a WWII story unlike any other I've ever come across. Definitely dealing with the heartache of the era, but also such humor and touching characters and townspeople... reminiscent to me of the movie "Life is Beautiful". Not in story line, to be clear, but in essence.

Old book but one of the most memorable I've read. Italy, wine, comedy, suspense, it has it all!

A slightly whimsical and meandering start got me wondering what I was actually reading, but the strands all soon wove together and I was in the midst of a delightful and comic tale, about wartime resistance, human nature and wine.Adroitly mixing historical reality with fictional endeavors, this is a really lovely and escapist story, which I am sure brings back memories for anyone who has traveled in this region, while creating a perfect and vivid backdrop for anyone who has not yet done so - but

I read this book for the Wine Store Book Club I moderate for my library. I would not have read it otherwise, in spite of the fact that I chose the book as a selection for the club. The plot sounded amusing. A small wine-making village in the hills of Italy tries to hide close to one million bottles of wine from the occupying Nazis. Amusing isn't quite the word I used once I finished the book. The story takes place near the end of WWII, just after Mussolini is executed. The Germans are occupying

Really torn on this book, as I remember the movie that was made from this - a movie that was a huge box office disappointment! Maybe it is because I am Italian, maybe it is because the sites in the book all come from the region of my ancestry - Le Marche on the Adriatic Coast - and maybe it is because of the fact that this is an older book based on WW2. I wanted to like the book that is sort of classified as a comedy but at the same time there are vast parts of this book that deal with the

WOW. Reading this was a bit like reading the Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society, and a bit like watching the 1953 movie Wages of Fear. Exciting, moving, funny, wise...and shocking, too. I have to admit it took me about 100 pages to really get into it, but then I couldn't put it down.